Cauleen Smith, Overview

Cauleen Smith, Overview

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Cauleen Smith: There is something really, really personal about processions. When you walk down the street and are making a public declaration, it draws individuals to you who want to know or are concerned or are engaged or curious about what you're expressing or what you're demonstrating. That's kind of different than really large political protests or agitations where there's sort of like a very forceful push outwards.

I actually think that art might be the only thing at this point. Not protesting, and not politics, but art may be the only thing that could actually create conversation and dialogue or reconciliation or mediation. Because politics has just completely failed us. What I hope my work is capable of is for individuals, it's for just any one person. If there's just enough of an opening in them that they think about themselves or the world or just think, and not even think differently, but just think for a moment. Just contemplate. Just open up a little bit, then I've done my job. Whereas politics is really about the martialing and controlling and deployment of power, and in order to have that power you have to have a lot of people in agreement functioning as a force. To me, that's the opposite of what art does.

Whitney Biennial 2017

Cauleen Smith, Overview

Cauleen Smith, Overview

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Cauleen Smith: My name is Cauleen Smith. I'm a filmmaker and visual artist.

Narrator: Smith sketched the texts on the front of these banners in 2015.

Cauleen Smith: I think this country was on its fifth or sixth videotaped police shooting and I was just sort of incredibly disgusted and angry and fatigued by the whole culture of this country.

The phrases are either things like "no wonder I go under" or "you don't hear me though." There's always either an accusation or a pointing at self or other, and, to me, the "I" or the "you" or the "me" can shift and does shift depending on who you are when you're reading it.

On the back of each banner there's a system of symbols and a lot of them repeat. People ask me in particular about why pencils and the pencil, the microphone and the camera aperture are all to me these instruments of expression. They're apertures for a voice, for initiative, for articulation, and so the pencil becomes this very flexible tool that can even be a weapon, can be kindling for a fire. It can do a lot of different things, not all of them affirmative, or affirming.

Narrator: Smith plans to use these banners in a film. A gospel choir will carry them down Martin Luther King Boulevard in Chicago, singing an original composition that uses text from the banners. If you’d like to hear Smith talk about processions, collective action, and the role of art, please tap to continue.